Front: Christ, Herman, Hansine, & Maren.
Back: Julia, Elna, Walter, Thorvald, Magnus, Gertha, and Inger.
(Identifications of those in the back row are based
on
birth order given in this history.)

The Christiansen
Family
StoryBy Maren Christiansen Pettit

The following story was written in the
1970s
by my great-aunt Maren in response to my request for family history.
She
was helped with memories by her sister Inger (my maternal grandmother),
who was visiting Maren for the summer when it was written

The letter is as she wrote it with only
minor
corrections made for obvious errors. Since Maren wrote down things as
she
thought of them, the letter is a trifle disorganized. It reminds me of
afternoons spent at kitchen tables listening to Maren, Inger, and Elna
talk about "when we were girls" as they drank copious amounts of coffee
and ate coffeecake and cinnamon rolls. Only a few comments, directed to
me and not part of the history, have been omitted. Comments in
[brackets]
were added by me while transcribing this. Typographical errors are, of
course, mine own.

Gabrielle David,April 2001

Maren wrote:

I'm going to write this "story" as if I'm writing a letter
to you - - - - and it probably will be like my letters, sort of
rambling
around and not like a good composition should be. As Inger & I
think
of things we'll make a note of them and maybe the letter will be
interesting
enough to tell to Paula & Gery by & by. [Paula & Gery are
Gabrielle's
children.]

Even a true story can begin with "Once Upon a Time" can't it? So --
Once
upon a time there were a man and his wife living in Denmark, near
Aarhus.
Her mother and his father lived with them. In the picture, its is
Farmor
("Father's mother" in the Danish language) who is standing to the left
of the door. The girl standing by her is Hansine Marie Mortensen. Uncle
Jens, her brother, is sitting on the doorstep and her mother &
father,
Anna Marie & Mads Mortensen are on the other side of the door with
Tante Katrine, Hansine's sister beside them.

Anna Marie [Ane Cathrine Marie] was a licensed midwife and
had to take care of a certain district. She was required to go to a
school
for a while every year to learn the latest techniques -- a sort of
refresher
course. The round object over the door, in the Denmark picture, is her
"shingle" to tell the community of her professional status. As we have
all been told about the other interesting details in the treasured
picture,
I won't go into that here. [Unfortunately, those details are now
largely
lost.]

Hansine Marie married Christ Christiansen when she was
nineteen.
We don't remember very much about his parents and early childhood but
know
he was an only child who was reared by a stepmother and his father.

One of the laws in Denmark at that time had every
able-bodied
male between the ages of 18 and 35 (?) serve a three-month's term in
the
army. This was a hardship and a grief to be separated from his family;
so they decided to emigrate to America. They had two children, Magnus
and
Thorvald, when they came to Racine, Wisconsin in the early 1880s.
Hansine's
mother & father & sister came, too, later.

But Uncle Jens got here by a different route: when he was
only
fourteen years old, he was shanghaied in Copenhagen and forced to work
on a whaling vessel. He almost lost his life when a whale upset their
boat.
A sail trapped a pocket of air in which he came up & survived until
he was rescued by some of the crew. He jumped ship in San Francisco and
hid in the attic of a friendly baker until his ship left port, the
baker
bringing him food etc. once a day under cover of darkness, as it was
very
risky for him to harbor any ship-refugees.

Your great grandfather was known as Chris, hardly anyone
sounding
the T. He worked in the Studebaker Wagon Works in Racine for some
years.
Thorvald met a tragic death soon after they got there. [My mother told
me that Thorvald drowned in the kitchen cistern while playing with a
toy
boat. When his mother died nearly sixty years later, the toy boat was
found
among her effects.] Two more children were born there, Walter and
Gertha.
In a few years they moved to a farm near Tyler, Minnesota. All the rest
of the children, of a family of twelve, were born there, the youngest
being
four years old when they moved to a farm west of Larimore, North
Dakota,
in April 1904. The Minnesota period was from 1887 to 1904.

The years in Minnesota were hard, but full of interesting
and
even amusing incidents. They experienced terrible blizzards, droughts,
prairie fires, & crop-destroying hailstorms. It probably was after
the Big Hailstorm that they lived mostly on rabbit meat all one winter.
a special treat, on Sunday, was oatmeal with sugar & cider. At one
time their only fuel for the kitchen stove was "knots" of twisted hay.
There was a great deal of long wild prairie grass that made the finest
hay. This burned quickly and was what burned in the fires that raced
across
acres & acres in a short time.

One time Walter & Gertha stuck their dolls down in a
badger
hole for safekeeping while they ran ahead of a spreading fire to the
safety
of the house & other buildings. It was customary to plow so wide a
band of furrows around the farm buildings that the fires couldn't cross
them.

An amusing thing happened to this family of city-bred
pioneers:
When they were cutting hay, they uncovered four small furry wild
"kittens"
of some kind or other. They took them back to the house and fed them
bread
and milk. They'd hide behind a barrel & so weren't in sight when
neighbors
came. Of course it was the natural thing to show them & wonder what
they were. One day they took a stick to poke them from their hiding
place
-- and found out to their dismay that they smelled terrible, no matter
what they were! Skunks were left strictly alone after that.

There was a native tiny-leaved plant that was used for tea
in many of the homes. Some wild fruit, choke cherries and plums
particularly,
were theirs for the picking.

Magnus walked ten miles to the nearest school. He lived
with
an Indian family whose ways and food were strange to him. At the end of
the week, he'd walk home again to get clean clothes and fill up on our
mamma's good food.

The first son born in Tyler was named Thorvald too; then
came
Elna, Inger, Julia, Alma, Herman, Agneta & Maren. Alma & Agneta
died while still infants. [Inger named her only doll Agneta after her
baby
sister. The china-headed doll is now one of my treasured possessions.]

Their parents had good neighbors and made life-long friends
-- best remembered being Jacob Jacobsen and "Tante" Mary, his wife.
Mamma
& Mary helped one another when babies came. Even nine-year-old
Gertha
was needed -- at least one time going to Tante Mary's to bake bread for
the family of seven or eight.

The whole neighborhood would celebrate the holidays, Danish
or American. Sometimes they went to a resort-recreation center named
Tivoli
-- I suppose for the world-famous Tivoli in Copenhagen. At the family
gatherings
in one anther's homes they'd sing and dance and enjoy the old Danish
folk
dances and games. Our father taught us to dance. No wonder we've always
enjoyed waltzing!

The Russell Farm near Larimore

He was a good farmer, forward looking, & ready to see
the
advantages of new & better equipment and eager to learn how to
increase
the yield of the crops. He owned 640 acres of the best farmland in the
fertile Red River Valley. He had his own threshing rig, doing custom
threshing
for neighbors for miles around besides his own crops. With the rig went
the cook car -- the bunk car, bundle wagons, grain tanks (a wagon made
especially for hauling small grains). If a piece of machinery broke
down,
Pa could fashion the necessary replacements in the blacksmith shop --
unless it was too complicated. Then he'd send off for the piece &
have to wait til it came.

The blacksmith shop was a cheery place with its firey
"furnace",
the bellows & the sound of the big hammers and the anvil. One
winter
he spent quite a lot of time making an ice-sled -- used binder canvas
for
a sail. At the end of a fast & breathtaking first run it took a
nose
dive when it hit the bank at the far end of the bond. It didn't matter
much to Pa; he had proved that it would work. It became a make-believe
ship for youngsters for a long time.

The granary would hold 20,000 bushels of grain. The barn
could
store tons & tons of hay in the mow while below there was plenty of
room for the many horses needed to run such a big farm. We've enjoyed
remembering
the barndances held in the nearly-empty mow. The machine shed held the
threshing rig engine and separator in the middle, and on the sides, the
binders and drills, and plows, and drags, mowers, and I don't know what
all was kept there in the winter & while not in use in the
summertime.

We can remember some of the names of the 36 horses. Besides
the three ponies, Kate, Beauty & Lona, there were Jim & Dolly,
a valuable team, Big Jim, Little Jim, & Whisky Jim, Ned, Big
Beauty,
Lady, Jers, Dick, Tut's Dick, and Pewaukee. (This is the way we got my
(Maren) horse, Peewaukee: Ul Tor [see P.S. #1] had her hitched to a
buggy
& she was only a bag of bones. Pa felt sorry for her & bought
the
outfit, horse, harness, & buggy -- & said it was Maren's.)
Pewaukee
was hitched to the buggy to take lunches, and many times, full meals,
to
the men working in the fields. In the pasture were six little colts, a
jackass, and old retired Topper who was the friskiest one in the bunch!
There were a Dandy & Dan, too.

The first year they were in North Dakota, as they met more
families and made new friends, our Dad invited them to help celebrate
his
birthday, Mar. 31. He told them it was a standing invitation as long as
he lived. We remember well the preparations, even weeks, before the
day.
The summer dining room was cleared of the winter's accumulation of
stuff
and benches, made of nail kegs with horse blanket pads, were set up
around
the walls. This left the center free for the folk dances and games. One
year there were eighty-eight people for the noon sitdown meal! The
children
had to wait til all the grown-ups were through -- & oh -- how we
wished
they wouldn't sit so long over their dessert and coffee & talk
&
talk & talk. Sometimes only the old folks & littlest children
came
for dinner. They'd go home late in the afternoon and the younger
grownups
and teenagers came for supper and the partying afterwards. These
affairs
included afternoon coffee and midnight lunch as well as noon dinner and
supper. It staggers the imagination to think of all the baking &
roasting
and cooking of all that food and other hard work -- no [hard to
decipher
-- kitchens ??] in those days.

I remember Inger, with Julia's help, and Mamma's (Mamma
must
have baked tons of white bread in her time -- & many loaves of
sour-dough-raised
bread) cooking for this crowd -- & in the cook car during the
threshing
season; -- in fact there were twenty, twenty-five people at every meal
all summer long. She was an industrious young lady who could do
anything
-- & this in spite of handicaps that would have stopped some
people.
[Because of a congenital nerve disorder Inger had little feeling in her
arms. This proved a blessing when she fell off a fence as a youngster,
cut her right hand on a can, and gangrene set in. One of her fingers
was
completely amputated and others, including her thumb, were partially
amputated.
Muscle & tendon damage left her unable to completely open her hand.
The blessing was that she felt very little pain even though the
amputation
was done without anesthetic.] She was an expert seamstress; sang in the
country glee club & church; chorded on an old pump organ for
Thorvald
when he played the fiddle for dances.

When she and Julia had dates, the transportation was by
horse
& buggy, or sled, most of the time. She and the other brothers
&
sisters bought books whenever they could -- all the family liked to
read,
and these books were read in turn; sometimes a book about be taken "out
of turn" & devoured in a secret place. Even the toilet served this
purpose -- nobody bothered there.

When Julia had a date, Inger would say "Go ahead and get
ready
-- Maren & I will wash the dishes." When Inger had a date &
Julia
didn't, she'd say the same thing. Neither one asked Maren about it
&
she didn't appreciate the "honor" either. Often groups of young people
would sing, with organ accompaniment, for hours and hours -- songs that
now are classified as "nostalgia".

When Inger rode horseback, to get the cattle in from the
prairie
etc; it was usually on Kate. Herman rode Lona and hitched her to a cart
sometimes. Beauty was ridden by anyone else who needed her.

In 1916 Inger married John Joseph Hollister. You, and Joe
&
Hop, are familiar with your own childhood with Ann & Dick &
Mom,
so I won't say anything about that. [Joe & Hop are my brothers, Ann
is my mother (Inger's daughter), Dick is my father, and Mom is what we
all (except my father) called Inger.] And Inger can tell you about her
& Joe's life in Cleveland. But I want to tell one particular
incident
that concerns your grandfather.

Joe had been a teamster with the Ringling Brothers' Circus
before coming to our place; so he went with Pa & Ma & Walter
and
me to Grand Forks when the circus came there one summer when I was six
or seven. We had gone down, on the train, the day before in order to be
at the unloading siding the next morning early. We took it all in,
being
allowed to go anywhere we wanted to. On all sides came shouts of joy
when
his old buddies saw Joe. We were privileged to eat breakfast in the
teamsters'
tent -- courtesy of this well-liked man. After we'd eaten, we went back
to the hotel to wait for the big parade. In the afternoon we went to
the
big top to see this Greatest Show on Earth. When it was over, there was
such a hurrying to get out it was dangerous for children & old
folks
or those not so robust. Walter had been sick for quite a long time and
certainly not stout enough to withstand the pressure; but Joe made a
protective
shield for Walter by putting his arms around him, still letting him
walk
freely, without getting bumped and hurting his back. That act of
compassion
was indicative of his true character -- we all really loved Joe.

Writing "indicative of character' made me think of a nice
thing
in our home: Our parents were Danes, as you know, & spoke the
language
fluently; of course all the children learned it from them and used it
as
often as English. But Dane was not spoken when there were hired
men, or schoolteachers, present. This was insisted upon & adhered
to
at all times.

Ma & Pa (as we sometimes said, instead of Mamma &
Papa
-- never Mom & Dad) really taught themselves to read and write in
the
English language. Talking in English I suppose was picked up by
associating
with English-speaking people & from their children's schoolwork.

I've written some about Papa, your great-grandfather on
your
mother's side. And now I want to say something about our mother -- i.e.
besides what is already included in the parts about their family and
life
together.

She
told me of being apprenticed to a dairy farm in Denmark, where she
learned
the art of making good butter and cheeses. Her parents paid for her
education
there, but she had to do such very hard work under poor conditions and
nearly staved -- the food was so bad. Another time she went to a sort
of
school and learned to sew and knit and crochet. Gardening came
naturally
-- I've heard her say she would have been a professional landscape
gardener
if girls had been allowed even half the freedom then, as they had at
the
time she told me.

Mamma, or Beda, as grandchildren and many others called
her,
was a good wife and mother -- kind, gentle, hospitable and hard
working.
She helped in the field, doing a man's work as a matter of course. She
helped put up hay, pitching it to the stack, three days before Thorvald
was born (in Tyler) & then was alone home when he did come -- all
the
rest of the family were in the hayfield.

Her garden, at Russell Farm & in town (Larimore) were a
child's idea of paradise -- when they moved to town, the lot
surrounding
the house was bare of shrubbery & flowers -- rubble from an old
house
took up a big part of the yard. It didn't take her long to make a Thing
of Beauty of the whole place. When folks would go for a little drive
after
supper, they'd drive by our house as slowly as they could, just to
enjoy
her flowers & vegetable garden. She really influenced the whole
neighborhood
to spruce up -- it was neater, cleaner and prettier than that end of
town
had ever been. Their gardens were nice but none equaled hers in sheer
loveliness.

In spite of the hundreds of hours of hard manual labor,
Mamma
always was a lady in every sense of the word -- not "high society" lady
but a thoroughbred gentlewoman. In the wintertime, even if it was
40-degrees
below zero outdoors, her windows were full of blooming lowers. To this
day, Inger & I enjoy all flowers, a "heritage" we've appreciated.
She
also instilled in us a sense of thrift that has stood us in good stead
all our lives. It was always Mamma who suggested going to church, as I
remember Sunday mornings. They did support the Lutheran church in their
community wherever they lived. On two occasions they quit because of so
much bickering and quarreling by some of the congregation. That didn't
belong in their idea of worship of God.

And now, my dear Gabrielle, I'm gong to begin to end this
long,
long letter. You can get Inger & Ann to elaborate on anything I've
written & I promise to answer any questions you care to ask -- if I
can, of course.

This has been a real labor of love and I am glad Inger
asked
me to write about our folks and everything.

Maren

P.S. #1

While we were still on the farm, our place was the logical
stopping-place for every transient, peddler, and sales man on the road
from Larimore to Niagara & points west. For one thing, the barn
always
had room for the horses -- and the men were sure of two good meals and
a decent bed. If the "tramps", as they were called, wanted to work to
pay
for the meals, there always was something they could do. But offers to
work, or just asking for food, nobody was ever turned away.

The peddlers were of two kinds: some came walking with huge
packs on their backs [others in carts or buggies, I'm sure Maren meant
to write]. We looked forward to seeing one who came every summer --
Jor'en
Jul. He carried pins & needles & laces & braid &
thimbles
& scissors -- some yard goods & ribbons. One, Sam Shaum by
name,
came more than once in the summer -- with baskets of whichever fruit
was
in season -- & later with warm jackets & men's underwear,
mittens,
etc. Another was called "Ul-Toi" a Danish word for "woolen goods". [Uld
is Danish for wool. I'm not sure about Toi (or Tor, as
Maren
wrote it in telling about the acquisition of her pony). The
Christiansen
children learned to speak Dane but they never really learned to write
it
and their spelling was sometimes phonetic.] Shaum had a spring wagon,
&
usually two horses. The woolen goods man always came in a top buggy
&
was a sort of dandy, dude, or whatever you call it. Johnny Miller lived
only six, seven miles away so never stayed all night. He butchered his
own meat & sold it from door to door in a covered-over wagon.

P.S. #2

In talking about our parents & sisters & brothers,
we have not unearthed a cattle-rustler, nor a horse thief. So far as
were
know, all of the family have been decent, honorable people. Of course,
we surely have bent the Ten Commandments -- seems like everybody does
in
some ways. "But not so much as some people have." I believe we can say
that without a "holier than thou" attitude, too.

Inger and I used the phrase "just plain good" when we spoke
of Herman & Julia & Mamma. Ann knew Herman & can tell you
many
nice things about him. And Inger can tell about the rest of us, I
guess.
If we were to name each one and their spouses and offspring, there'd be
a page or two of statistics. Maybe there is an apt phrase to describe
each
one, as the phrase we used for Herman & Julia. I believe it applies
to Elna, too.

P.S. #3

If you're wondering what became of Russell Farm, I'll tell
what we know about it. Pa sold the farm to the three sons, Magus,
Thorvald,
and Herman on crop payment, then moved to Larimore. He became the
distributor
(bought the franchise or whatever they call it) for the Bartles Oil
company.
Was doing fine, too, when he died in 1919.

Thorvald and family lived on the farm, first, and Herman
stayed
with them. He & Thorvald put in Magnus' crops as well as their own.
Later Magnus lived there & Herman stayed with them. Thorvalds had
moved
to Niagara -- they tended his land. After a few years Magnus left and
Herman
tended all their shares by himself, i.e. with the help of many hired
men
and a housekeeper-cook in the busiest seasons.

For many years the crops were so bad, and some a complete
failure,
that the boys couldn't meet the mortgage payments (mortgages they had
to
have to buy seed) & finally lost the land.

The Christiansen
Children,
their Spouses, and their Children:

Magnus married Mary Howe. Their children were named Dagmar, Axel
[killed
in action in Germany on September 19, 1944, during World War II],
Marie,
& Doris.

[As Maren wrote in her history letter, the first Thorvald died as
a
child in a tragic accident, and Alma and Agneta died as infants.]

Addendum

Chris Christiansen (paraphrased from
his
obituary)

Christ Christiansen was born March 31, 1854, at Vejinge, Fyen,
Denmark,
where he lived with his parents until the age of 22 when he was married
to Hansine Mortensen. They came to America in 1879 and settled at
Racine,
Wisconsin, where they lived for seven years before moving to Tyler,
Minnesota,
where they lived for eighteen years before moving to Larimore, North
Dakota.
They lived on the Russell Farm there for several years, then moved to
town
in 1917.

He was a good farmer, an inventive machinist, and a fine
businessman.

"Papa" died at his home in Larimore on Thursday evening, December
4,
1919, at 9:30 o'clock, after an illness of a few days. He had
contracted
a bad cold that later developed into pneumonia. He was survived by his
wife and by eight of his children, though his daughter Julia died only
days later. He was buried in the Bethel Church graveyard in Larimore
after
funeral services in the family home.

Hansine Christiansen

Hansine Christiansen was called Sine (or Signa) and later was
known
as Beda, or Betta, because Dagmar, her first grandchild, called her
that
and it caught on with the rest of the family.

Trained in Denmark to make cheese and butter, she was also an
expert
with needles and thread and at the many skills needed by a farm wife
and
mother. It was not unusual for her to work beside the men in the fields
when needed.

Sine's love, after her husband and family, was flowers. In a diary
covering
1922-24, she notes faithfully the flowers she has planted, along with
the
weather, work done, and visitors. She also recorded the anniversaries
of
her husband's birth and death, and the anniversaries of the deaths of
her
children Julia & Walter and her son-in-law Joe, mentioning each
time
how much she missed them.

Sine died December 14, 1938. She is buried near her husband in
Bethel
churchyard.